Communal Discord, Child Abduction, and Rape in the Later Middle Ages (The New Middle Ages)

Hardcover, xiv + 239 pages, NOT ex-library. Book is clean and bright throughout with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Light external handling wear. Issued without a dust jacket. -- Did medieval women have the power to choose? This is a question at the heart of this book which explores three court cases from Yorkshire in the decades after the Black Death. Alice de Rouclif was a child heiress made to marry the illegitimate son of the local abbot and then abducted by her feudal superior. Agnes Grantham was a successful businesswoman ambushed and assaulted in a forest whilst on her way to dine with the Master of St Leonard's Hospital. Alice Brathwell was a respectable widow who attracted the attentions of a supposedly aristocratic conman. These are their stories. -- Contents: Genealogical Tables; Maps; Part I: Alice's Evidence -- Dramatis Personae; Preface; 1. Alice de Rouclif: An Eventful Childhood 2. William Pottell: Stories and Storytellers 3. Ellen Taliour: Gender and the Remembrance of Times Past 4. Robert Thewed: The Ties of Tenure and Locality 5. Anabilla Wascelyne: The Ties of Kinship 6. Dom. William Marrays: Stories and Readers 7. Alice Through the Looking Glass; Part II: Sex and the City -- 8. Brewing Trouble: the Devout Widow's Tale 9. Patriarchy, Civic Identity, and the Widow of Doncaster; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index. …